The Meat Block celebrates 15 years of quality products, service

Rachel Kroeger

Staff

August 25, 2025

NORTHEAST WISCONSIN – After a phone call-turned-job opportunity led him down a career path in the meat processing industry, Phil Schmidt – owner/member of The Meat Block, LLC – said he and his wife, Vicki, took a leap of faith and opened their own business 15 years ago.

In 2010, Schmidt said he and Vicki gathered the necessary financial support from three business partners to buy a building in Greenville – opening The Meat Block’s doors for the first time in 2010.

Clyde Weycker, Schmidt said, is their last remaining partner after the husband-wife duo progressively bought out the other two.

“So, [Vicki and I] own the majority of it,” he said.

Schmidt said his introduction to the industry came when he was 17 years old.

He said his father received a call from Jack Haen – one of the four Haen brothers who, at that time, owned and operated Haen Meat Packing in Kaukauna – asking if anyone in his family could help them during the coming deer season.

“[Jack] called my dad and said, ‘Hey, do you have anybody old enough to skin deer?’” he said. “So, I [rode] my bike down and worked through that deer season.”

Following that season, Schmidt said he spent the next two decades of his life working at Haen Meat Packing.

“I worked my way right up [to a position that was] underneath the four brothers,” he said. “There was really no room for advancement for me anymore at that point.”

That’s when Schmidt said he and Vicki began thinking about “starting our own thing.”

“We’ve been together since she was 16 and I was 18,” he said. “So, we looked at each other and said, ‘We started this journey with nothing when we were in high school, and the worst that’s going to happen is we’re going to end up with nothing again. But if we don’t try it, we’ll always wonder what could have been.’”

Fifteen years later, Schmidt said everyone at The Meat Block – customers, employees or otherwise – is excited to see the business achieve its operational milestone.

Quality cuts, local roots

Offering a selection of both award-winning fresh and processed meats, Schmidt said The Meat Block sources its products and ingredients from both local and national suppliers.

“If you bought a quarter or half of beef, or half or a whole pig from us, that’s all going to be stuff that we harvested in house, raised locally right around the Fox Valley,” he said. “We’ve got several [local] farmers who we work with. But, from a retail standpoint, it’s impossible to harvest what you need to supply your store.”

Schmidt said though The Meat Block is smaller than some major processors, it’s still one of the largest full-service meat markets in the state – which allows it to be selective about sourcing materials.

As “one of the biggest [suppliers, but smaller] full-service meat markets in the state,” Schmidt said The Meat Block can “be very picky” about where its materials are sourced from.

“Suppliers want to work with us because of the amount of product that we go through,” he said. “We’re a very good customer of theirs, and they’re also a very good vendor for us.”

All beef sold in either of The Meat Block’s locations – the original Greenville facility and the newer location in Kaukana – Schmidt said, is classified under an 1855 program – “which is a top-third program of all beef.”

“It’s a step above Certified Angus Beef, and the quality is amazing,” he said. “We [focus on] putting the absolute best product we can in our store for our customers every time.”

Schmidt said sourcing from larger suppliers also helps keep their product quality more consistent than if they were purchasing from smaller or hobby farms.

“People specialize in things… so, if you’re [running] a beef operation and you do a really good job raising animals, you’re going to have some of the best quality meat out there,” he said. “Same with the pork producers – it’s hard for a guy who raises four or five pigs a year to have a very consistent animal and carcass when it’s all said and done.”

In addition to its meat selection, through various acquisitions over the years, Schmidt said The Meat Block has become customers’ one-stop barbecue shop.

“We were probably in business for three years, and one of our high school employees’ parents owned BBQ Pits n’ Spits, which was a grill store in Appleton,” he said. “So, we bought their business, bought their name and brought them into our store.”

After bringing the Pits n’ Spits’ name and merchandise into his stores, Schmidt said the doors were opened for other barbecue enthusiasts to pitch and possibly sell their products at The Meat Block.

“We’ve [partnered] with different companies to sell a lot of the best spices and sauce blends out there, from all around the country,” he said. “We try to find what our customers want and stuff we really like so that we’re able to sell it – because if you truly like something, it’s easy to sell.”

In addition to the “100 different species and sauces” The Meat Block carries, Schmidt said the acquisition of BBQ Pits n’ Spits brought grill sales to the business.

“If you have a good steak, you need a good grill, [and] if you have a good grill, you need a good steak,” he said. 

Schmidt said he is “very particular” about the types of grills The Meat Block will carry and sell in stores.

“If we’re going to put a line of grills in our store, it’s not going to be a cheap line of grills – it’s going to be one that I know our customers can get service [on] to back it up,” he said. “If you buy a grill from us, it’s probably the only grill you’re going to buy for the next 15 years… It’s going to be quality built and last a long, long time.”

Price point reflects quality

Schmidt said he experienced a true full-circle moment five years ago when he added a second location to The Meat Block’s portfolio by purchasing Haen Meat Packing from the very family that introduced him to the industry.

“We were about as big as we could get in our Greenville location, [so] we were looking to grow, and the Haens were actually looking at [the] succession [plan] for their family business,” he said. “So, Tim Haen approached me… about buying Haen Meat Packing – which was kind of surreal.”

Purchasing Haen Meat Packing, Schmidt said, provided an opportunity for The Meat Block to harvest animals as well.

“We do beef and pork harvesting every week here – most of which is custom processing,” he said.

Schmidt said custom processing is a service used by local farmers who have carcasses but no ability to process the meat themselves.

“A farmer brings us the animal they raised, and… if we split it into quarters, four different customers would buy the beef from them, and they would pay us to process it,” he said.

Having a facility where they could focus on the processing side of The Meat Block’s business, Schmidt said, also opened a door to specialize its Greenville location.

“We moved [operations for] all of our cooking

However, Schmidt said that doesn’t mean customers aren’t able to shop for their favorite products at either Meat Block location.

“All of our products are in both stores, so from a customer standpoint, you wouldn’t necessarily know that we’re making this in Kaukauna or this [one] in Greenville,” he said. “We run a transfer van every single day of the week to make sure that we get products where we need them.”

Servant leadership culture

Through all the changes and pivots his business has made over the years, Schmidt said one aspect of The Meat Block has remained the same since its opening.

“‘From our family to your table’ is our tagline, and one of our passions behind that is my wife and I both strongly believe that a really important part of family is family dinner,” he said. “So, when we started The Meat Block, we hired a chef, we put in a kitchen and we started [selling] meals that people could take home and warm up or put in the oven…, [giving] them an option to sit down as a family.”

Drawing on his own, at times, stressful experiences as an employee in the industry, Schmidt said a passion of the owners at The Meat Block is “servant leadership.”

“We’re big into empowering our staff, growing our staff and treating each other with dignity and respect,” he said. “When you come to work for us, you’re going to find, hopefully, a culture that’s very welcoming, that you enjoy coming to work [in, because] we spend way too much time at work to dread going to work.”

And Schmidt said the intentionally supportive culture they’ve built since day one at The Meat Block has resulted in “very good retention rates” among his staff.

“The few people that do go – knock on wood – have left for better opportunities that we couldn’t match, and I celebrate that,” he said. “I want people to be as successful as they can… Your life is short, go make the most of it.”

Schmidt said owning and operating The Meat Block has been “an amazing journey.”

“I look back and think, if we wouldn’t have started The Meat Block, we would have just stayed comfortable…, and since we turned it over to God’s plan to let things just happen, it’s just been an amazing ride,” he said.

For more on The Meat Block’s products, services and locations, visit themeatblock.com or its social media pages.